The invention relates to an apparatus for removing, transporting, erecting and inserting folding boxes from a magazine containing flatly folded boxes into a conveyor with conveyor cells for receiving one erected folding box. The apparatus has a planet carrier rotatably driven about a sun axis a planet shaft mounted pivotable about a planet axis eccentric to the sun axis and parallel to it at the planet shaft and a gripper with a head that holds the folding box as well as a planet wheel coaxial with the planet axis and coupled to a sun wheel fixed coaxially on the sun axis. The planet wheel and the sun wheel form a transmission for rotating the planet shaft on the planet carrier when the planet carrier is turned so that the gripper revolves on a closed hypocycloidal trajectory with several cusp points. A erecting element rotatably mounted on the planet shaft and abuts the folding box with a pusher as well as a driving device to erect the box as the system rotates.
Such device is known from the EP 0 580 958 of Fochler, and has proven itself in practice, but is fairly complex and expensive because of the complex mechanism used to operate the erecting tool. This mechanism is made up of various gears and levers coupled to the planet-carrier drive and is extremely difficult to set to work on boxes of different dimensions. What is more the entire drive assembly of the various part is very complex and expensive, and must be produced to very high precision.